GREAT PACIFIC GARBAGE PATCH PATCH

The organization is developing a system of large floating barriers with underwater screens that capture and concentrate plastics into one area ready to be scooped out of the ocean. The Mega Expedition mothership deployed above the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

GREAT PACIFIC GARBAGE PATCH PATCH

The Ocean Cleanup has pledged a “moonshot” effort to clean up half of the Great Pacific garbage patch within five years and mop up the other rubbish-strewn gyres by 2040. Much of the plastic waste accumulates in five circular ocean currents – known as gyres – found around the globe. It’s estimated there will be more waste plastic in the sea than fish by the year 2050. Plastic often attracts toxic pollutants that are then ingested and spread by marine life. Larger pieces of plastic pollution can entangle and kill marine creatures, while tiny fragments are eaten by small fish and find their way up the food chain. Around 8m tons of plastic ends up in the oceans every year, where it washes up on beaches or drifts out to sea where the pieces very slowly break down over hundreds of years. Plastic has proven a usefully durable and versatile product but has become a major environmental blight, tainting drinking water and rivers. Things are getting worse and we need to act now.” “We need a coordinated international effort to rethink and redesign the way we use plastics.

There’s clearly an increasing influx of plastic into the garbage patch. “There were things you just wondered how they made it into the ocean. Lebreton works for the Ocean Cleanup, a Dutch-based non-profit that is aiming to tackle the garbage patch. “I’ve been doing this research for a while, but it was depressing to see,” said Laurent Lebreton, an oceanographer and lead author of the study. Other items spotted in the stew of plastic include bottles, plates, buoys, ropes and even a toilet seat. While tiny fragments of plastic are the most numerous, nearly half of the weight of rubbish is composed of discarded fishing nets. Microplastics, measuring less than 0.5cm (0.2in), make up the bulk of the estimated 1.8tn pieces floating in the garbage patch, which is kept in rough formation by a swirling ocean gyre. The analysis, conducted by boat and air surveys taken over two years, found that pollution in the so-called Great Pacific garbage patch is almost exclusively plastic and is “increasing exponentially”.

Great pacific garbage patch